2) Pushing my way onto busses and trains. I admit that when I was living in Cary, IL and having to commute to the Loop everyday that I may have partaken in some territorial grudge matches while waiting for the Metra. Those suburban tiffs, however, pale in comparison to the full on pushing and shoving that I've witnessed here in Honduras between people trying to board the bus. I've straight up been pushed ---and I mean pushed--- by an an eighty year old woman who wanted to board the bus first. Getting a seat on a chicken bus can make or break your day, ask anyone. When I return to the US, civility reigns on public transportation.
3) Exposing my belly. It's a weird, apparently masculine, thing to do when your really hot down here, and amazingly it works, but it is super campo. Honduran men do it all of the time, and I picked it up while working on the soccer field with various day laborers. On a hot day in La Ceiba, nearly every man who is not wearing a button down shirt will be exposing his belly. I mean if everyone else is doing it why not, right?
4) Being Catracho: "You're more Catracho then us," said the Honduran professor from Harvard, as he lauded our use of vernacular, hand flips, and lip points. The hardest thing to shake will be all of the little cultural things I've picked up while living here. Saying buen provecho before every meal, often to people I don't even know as they're eating, pointing the direction of things with my lips, flipping my hand to expose my palm when I need something or just want to say "what's going on", showing the back of my hand when signaling for someone to ven aqui, hastily slurring words and phrases like, no hombre (pronounced nombre), randomly dropping the "s" off of words like vos o pues, saying adios to nearly every one I pass on the street, even if I don't know them, and of course perpetually muttering permiso while working my way through a crowded bus or room.
5) Drinking things with sugar. I've tried to fight it,but I have found myself addicted to those molecular complexes of energy. I never added sugar, or really even drank pop before I came to Hondu. That is going to be a hard addiction to break. My teeth and body will thank me for giving it up though.
6) Restoring meeting etiquette. Not answering my cell phone. I use to detest this practice, but I have found myself mimicking Hondurans when it comes to answering your phone during the middle of the meeting and not excusing myself from the table. An excerpt from our friend Jenna on cellphone use in Honduras from her blog JP (that's jota-pe) in Honduras.
I looked up to see the head nurse text messaging. Text messaging. Moments before the baby’s head was about to crown. Infuriated, she yelled, ‘Put down your phone and help me!,’ to which the text messaging fiend of a nurse sassily responded, ‘Nadie aquí le puede ayudar, mamita…¡empuje!’ (No one here can help you sweetie… push!). Right!?!?!? I mean… can you BELIEVE that? The answer of any person who has ever spent any amount of time in Honduras: absofuckinlutely.
Honduran cell phone etiquette is otro pedo (this means ‘something else’, but the literal translation is ‘other fart’... it’s definitely in my top five favorite Spanish phrases). Here, phone calls and text messages are answered under practically any circumstance, childbirth included. In my first few months here I would attend the bimonthly meetings which municipal authority figures are required to hold by a law put in place to encourage transparency and mitigate corruption in local governments. Anyways, in these meetings, an act is read recapping the previous meeting’s content, then those present discuss current projects being carried out in the town, proposed projects (latrine construction, electrification of a neighborhood, a sanitary landfill, etc.), and requests from poorer people in the community for funds to travel by bus to Santa Rosa and pay for a medical consultation at the hospital. In other words, things that could potentially be important. These meetings tend to last somewhere around four hours and for every single one of the 14,400 seconds of those four hours, someone at the table is dicking around on their phone; I’ve even witnessed people who are sitting directly across from one another sending messages to each other.
6) Restoring meeting etiquette. Not answering my cell phone. I use to detest this practice, but I have found myself mimicking Hondurans when it comes to answering your phone during the middle of the meeting and not excusing myself from the table. An excerpt from our friend Jenna on cellphone use in Honduras from her blog JP (that's jota-pe) in Honduras.
I looked up to see the head nurse text messaging. Text messaging. Moments before the baby’s head was about to crown. Infuriated, she yelled, ‘Put down your phone and help me!,’ to which the text messaging fiend of a nurse sassily responded, ‘Nadie aquí le puede ayudar, mamita…¡empuje!’ (No one here can help you sweetie… push!). Right!?!?!? I mean… can you BELIEVE that? The answer of any person who has ever spent any amount of time in Honduras: absofuckinlutely.
Honduran cell phone etiquette is otro pedo (this means ‘something else’, but the literal translation is ‘other fart’... it’s definitely in my top five favorite Spanish phrases). Here, phone calls and text messages are answered under practically any circumstance, childbirth included. In my first few months here I would attend the bimonthly meetings which municipal authority figures are required to hold by a law put in place to encourage transparency and mitigate corruption in local governments. Anyways, in these meetings, an act is read recapping the previous meeting’s content, then those present discuss current projects being carried out in the town, proposed projects (latrine construction, electrification of a neighborhood, a sanitary landfill, etc.), and requests from poorer people in the community for funds to travel by bus to Santa Rosa and pay for a medical consultation at the hospital. In other words, things that could potentially be important. These meetings tend to last somewhere around four hours and for every single one of the 14,400 seconds of those four hours, someone at the table is dicking around on their phone; I’ve even witnessed people who are sitting directly across from one another sending messages to each other.
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| I wonder if taking pictures of someone on their phone is considered more rude than simply being on your phone? |
